Yelabuga

By VALZHYNA MORT

Maria does her washing by the wall
so bare that you’d think she shaved it.

The window’s open, anyone can see.
Soap hisses. Air-raid warning rings
like a telephone from the future.
Her dress is nailed onto the laundry line.
From this gray garment, that is either guarding
or attacking the house, three yards of darkness
fall across the floorboards. She stands inside,
like on the bottom of a river, her heart an octopus.

Her hands so big, next to them, her head is a small o,
(the neighbors squint)

stuffed hungrily with stubborn hair.

 

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. She is the author two poetry collections, Factory of Tears and Collected Body. A recipient of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship and the Bess Hokin Prize for Poetry, she teaches at Cornell University.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 09 here.]

Yelabuga

Related Posts

Gray Davidson Carroll's headshot next to the cover of The Common Issue 28.

Podcast: Gray Davidson Carroll on “Silent Spring”

GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL
Poet Gray Davidson Carroll speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about their poem “Silent Spring,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. Gray talks about poetry as a way to witness and observe the world and how we experience it, and how it’s changing.

February 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

MARC VINCENZ
Oh, you genius, you beehive, / you spark, you contiguous line— / all from the same place of origin // where there is no breeze. // All those questions posed … / take no notice, the image / is stamped on your brow, even // as you glare in the mirror, // as the others are orbiting

Excerpt from The Math of Saint Felix

DIANE EXAVIER
I turn thirty-two / the sky is mostly cloudy / over my apartment / facing Nostrand // and all my parents are dead // I am rolling my hips / toward death in a dying / city on a planet dying / just a touch slower than me // and one sister jokes we only need thirty more years